18th November 2021
Writer Emma Landsburgh explores the dangers of anonymity after a stabbing rumour was circulated by student confession page “Glasknow 2.0”. A couple of weeks ago, on the popular Facebook page GlasKnow 2.0, a post appeared stating that there had been a stabbing on campus. This rumour spread rapidly throughout the student body, despite the lack ...
17th November 2021
Ben Short describes the dangers of the monopoly Facebook has over most popular social media platforms. Within a month, there has been two simultaneous crashes of three social media giants Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This wasn’t a coincidence; it was a result of monopolisation. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, five years before WhatsApp and ...
12th October 2021
The social media blackout on 4 October called into question how much we rely on social media platforms. 4 October saw our social lives flash before our eyes before disappearing almost entirely for the rest of the day. Down in minutes yet out for hours, Facebook’s apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook itself, among ...
5th May 2021
Sophie Gorman explores what to do when the news and social media make activism feel all too much. “Doom scrolling” is a term that gained popularity during 2020, meaning consuming a large quantity of negative news online all at once. It’s hard to avoid this feeling of the world being a terrifyingly unjust place when ...
30th April 2021
A girl comes of age on the internet. Overgrown e-boy Elon Musk says: “We’re already a cyborg… You have a digital version of yourself, a partial version of yourself online in the form of your emails, your social media, and all the things that you do.” This horcrux-ing of our souls has created digital distillations ...
23rd April 2021
Following the ban of Donald Trump from Twitter and the Myanmar Military from Facebook, should we be questioning how much power social media sites have over politics? In February 2021, Facebook banned the Myanmar military, the Tatmadaw, from Facebook. The censoring followed the capture of Myanmar by its military on 1 February which has resulted ...
23rd April 2021
It is hoped this tool will help shine a brighter light on how social media usage impacts the sleeping behaviour of adolescents. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a new system of determining how teenagers and young people are impacted by engaging with social media before going to bed. The Index of Nighttime ...
21st April 2021
After glorious weather on Easter weekend, many took to Kelvingrove Park to… complain about the other people enjoying the weather in the park? Under some glorious blue skies on the Easter bank holiday weekend, Kelvingrove Park was filled with people catching up with friends while sunning themselves – and the social media lockdown vigilantes did ...
18th March 2021
Is it fair to suggest that all online activism is performative? The term “slacktivism” is defined as “the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions characterised as involving very little effort or commitment” with “the main purpose of boosting the egos of participants in the ...
16th March 2021
Leanne Yule writes about how social media has its benefits as well as drawbacks, especially when it comes to communicating during Covid. Social media and I have always had an on again / off again relationship. Every year or so, I go through a phase where I read new scientific research confirming how bad social ...
